Low birthrates spell doom for world's rarest rhino

[Coventina]

Source: Associated Press

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Time and space are running out for the Javan Rhinoceros — the most endangered mammal in the world.

There are fewer than 60 left in the wild — almost all in a single Indonesian national park — and numbers appear to be declining for the first time in decades because of low birthrates, said Christy Williams, the WWF's Asian Rhino Specialist.

"We need to take immediate, urgent action to try to move some of these rhinos to another suitable site, either on Java or Sumatra island," he said Friday. "If we don't act quickly, I think we could lose this population."

The Javan rhino weighs 5,000 pounds (2,300 kilograms) and measures more than 10 feet (3 meters) in length. Conservation groups say it is the world's most endangered mammal.



Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h40jJXuBJvAOzm4Zu6C-FRgtsVwAD96OHESG2

[acmavm]

1. Why not take a pair and move them to a breeding zoo? Omaha

has Henry Doorly Zoo and it's one of the best in the world.

[Lost in CT]

2. I agree it may be time for Americans to step in and help out. nt

[La Lioness Priyanka]

3. not much is known about their mating habits, so the trauma in moving might

out do the potential benefits.

if not much is known, not much can be done to help.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Doesn't sound like it would work - from Wikipedia:

A Javan Rhinoceros has not been exhibited in zoos in a century. In the 1800s, at least four rhinos were exhibited in Adelaide, Calcutta and London. A total of at least 22 Javan Rhinos have been documented as having been kept in captivity, and it is possible that the number is greater as the species was sometimes confused with the Indian Rhinoceros. The Javan Rhinoceros never fared well in captivity: the oldest lived to be 20, about half the age the rhinos will reach in the wild. The last captive Javan Rhino died at the Adelaide Zoo in Australia in 1907 where the species was so little known that it had been exhibited as an Indian Rhinoceros. Because a lengthy and expensive program in the 1980s and 1990s to breed the Sumatran Rhinoceros in zoos failed badly, attempts to preserve the Javan species in zoos are unlikely.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javan_Rhinoceros

[The Stranger]

5. Goodbye, my friend.

I only wish my apology meant something to you.